My name is Jimmy M. Nzioki, a 4 times Author and soon to be 5 times author.
I’m an Electrical & Electronics Engineering graduate from JKUAT but with a passion for Ministry as a Teacher of the Word as well as through the written word. I serve at Deliverance Church Ole Kasasi as the current Youth Chairperson as well as a Teens Teacher.
I served at Lenana School as part of the Navigators High School Ministry for 4 years (2017-2021) during my time in Campus while also being active in JKUAT CU in various capacities.
My writing journey, began officially almost 9years ago. I say officially because I realized that the seeds for writing intelligible words were sown way earlier only that I didn’t know that one day I’d write to be published. To add some background, I was in a public school for the better part of my primary schooling, up to class 7 but a teacher’s strike in 2009 forced me to transfer to a private school.
It was here that the real work in moulding my abilities began. First, we hardly wrote compositions and inshas back in the public school but here in the private institution, we’d write almost daily!
To say that I sailed easily would be like saying you can swim in the ocean like you would in a calm river. In other words, it was H.A.R.D.
I was lagging behind in my studies due to the poor foundation & my poor handwriting didn’t help me. At some point I detested writing the compositions and more so the Inshas. To cut a long story short, it took me an year to put my writing act together and reading lots of story books especially the Pacesetters series, alongside some other English & Swahili books for me to write something acceptable.
Fast forward to High School & a strange desire for the English language was born. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the set books and writing their summaries/synopses. I read past set books while I was in Form 1 and by the time, I was a candidate, I’d read a significant number of them. After finishing my High School studies, I wrote my first book titled: Genius Is Made Not Born (a memoir about my academic & spiritual journey). The book was published in 2015 & that’s when I was introduced to the school of hard knocks of publishing.
Old technology was used (Offset Printing, the one that has plates and all). Once you make a mistake there’s no undoing them; and many mistakes were made! The book looked nice on the outside but had lots of issues with the layout and to cap it all my late Editor sent the wrong unedited manuscript to the Printer that hadn’t been proofread. It was devastating but after printing 1,000 copies you sell as is.
Despite the cited issues, the book’s uptake by the market was really good and it gave me the impetus & capital to publish my 2nd book, The Parapet in 2018 despite having written it at the same time as the 1st one. The Parapet was written for Standard 8 & Form-Four Candidates to help them out with their studies via tips and some inspiration from my own journey.
My 3rd book, The Gift of Presence was a major shift from the previous ones as it was a Christian Book with its core themes being the Presence of God and fellow men. These themes were traced in the Scriptures & how it applies to us today. A book that was highly welcome by the Christian fraternity & the clergy. The book was nominated in ACABA 2021 in the Christian Living Category
More details about The Gift of Presence can be found here
https://jimmynzioki.com/the-gift-of-presence/
As for my 4th Book, 40 Illustrations for Public Speakers, I wrote during my 5th Year of Studies and had a team of better readers who’d give me weekly feedback on each of the stories in the book. It thoroughly helped me in deciding which stories would be among the 1st in the book’s TOC.
Also, we all grow with time, indeed, enjoy the journey not just the destination!
Also, success in publishing isn’t necessarily measured by sales but also other intangible metrics such as Impact.
We can connect via LinkedIn/ Facebook/Twitter
I also do professional book reviews for local and international authors
